Deceit, death and drought bring awakening for Blood:Water

Nashville-based Christian band Jars of Clay co-founded Blood:Water with Jena Lee Nardella. Here they stand together at the site of a well in Kenya. Left to right: Stephen Mason, Matthew Odmark, Nardella, Charlie Lowell and Dan Haseltine.(Photo: Submitted)

At times, dark discourse would overtake Jena Lee Nardella's heart. Feelings of injustice and inadequacy that overshadowed the transformative work to which she has dedicated the past decade of her life.

It would rise at the most devastating of moments, when she was lying under a mosquito net in a Kenyan village listening to the nighttime wails of a dehydrated child in a community where water is scarce and HIV/AIDS is rampant.

At those junctures, she says, if you think about it too hard — if you spend one critical minute assessing just how wide the gap really is between the richest people and the poorest people in our world — well, it can make you a very contemptuous person.

“It can feel discouraging,” she says, “disgusting even.”

But in that space, Nardella finds her calling. As the co-founder of Blood:Water — a nonprofit focused on overcoming the HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa — she believes her place is to know and love people from opposite sides of the world, from opposite physical and financial circumstance, and introduce them to one another.

Ten years ago, Nardella was a fanciful college graduate steeled with a diploma and desire. She wanted to become the next Mother Teresa, to be a woman of charity and change. So she seized the chance to connect with Grammy Award-winning band Jars of Clay and found Blood:Water, beginning the mission of building 1,000 wells in Africa.

The goal was pure. She wanted to — she was going to — change the world.

But reflecting on it now, she acknowledges her naivete. As she has worked to grow the Nashville-based nonprofit, raising $27 million to bring clean water and HIV/AIDS support to 1 million people in 11 African countries, she has been tested by deceit, death and drought.

Jena Lee Nardella, co-founder of Blood:Water, stands in a dry dam during a drought in Marsabit, Kenya.(Photo: Submitted)

The driving idealism of her early years has gone idle. You can't save the world, she realizes now, but you can save people. One at a time. And that she does with grace and faith.

'Remarkable'

Her journey began with an earnest stirring in a child.

She remembers a day when she was 9 years old, passing a homeless man on the street in San Francisco. He looked at her, told her he was hungry.

"I was listening to him, but no one else was," she says. "It's the first time I realized something wasn't right with the world."

She didn't eat dinner that night. Instead, she asked for a to-go box and — with her mother's consent — walked through the streets looking for the man with the empty stomach. Though she never found him, he became symbolic to her of the people on street corners who are often ignored but ought not be.

Nardella channeled that empathy as a teenager, working as the kitchen coordinator at a homeless shelter. And hearing the broken stories, she somehow felt at home.

"I felt alive in it," she says.

In college, she learned about one of the world's great killers — AIDS. It terrified her to know that such malice could take place at the molecular level, sidelining the most healthy, vibrant part of the body. And she wanted to do something to stop it.

Around that same time, Nashville-based band Jars of Clay sat at a local coffee shop, brainstorming ways to fight HIV and AIDS in Africa. Clean water — which is crucial to the survival of those living with HIV and AIDS — became a rallying point.

In a chance encounter through a mutual acquaintance, the band and Nardella connected. After graduation, the young woman packed everything she owned into her Honda CRV and drove from Washington to Tennessee to begin the greatest journey of her life as director of Blood: Water Mission.

Nadella traveled the country on the band's tour bus, and after every show the musicians talked about Blood:Water's 1,000-well mission, soliciting donations. By the end of one year, they had raised more than $1 million. Soon, they were in African villages digging wells and teaching healthy sanitation practices that transformed communities.

Jena Lee Nardella, co-founder of Blood:Water, stands with a community group at the site of a well.(Photo: Submitted)

There were reductions of cholera and death from dehydration. Stomachaches went away, skin conditions improved, and residents could effectively wash their clothing. All of these health improvements, in turn, led to positive societal change.

Women and children no longer needed to spend their days walking miles to retrieve water — a murky liquid used to bathe, wash clothes and drink. Instead, many more children were able to attend school, and the women in certain communities could learn how to handle finances and care for the sick.

"It became remarkable," Nardella says.

But, five years into building a better world, disenchantment descended on idealism.

'Laced with brokenness'

It came first with deception.

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"We've actually never been called to save the world," says Jena Lee Nardella. "We can't. We won't. But we can love the world — and we can love the world one person at a time."(Photo: John Partipilo / The Tennessean)

An African organization leader with whom Blood:Water had partnered from the beginning — one with whom Nardella would stay when she visited Africa and in whom she confided most about her vision — misused Blood:Water's money.

"That shattered me," she says.

Around the same time, an American intern — a medical student who spoke fluent Swahili and who spent summer volunteering to the African cause — hopped a bus to visit friends in Tanzania. The bus crashed. The student died. All Nardella could think was no matter how much you give your life to something, it may destroy you.

Defeated by deceit and death, Nardella then faced the vehemence of Mother Nature. Blood:Water had spearheaded a project in the northern Kenyan desert building tanks to capture rainwater for the community. Instead of storms, there was a drought of emergency proportions. It didn't matter how hard they worked, she thought, she would never be able to make it rain. She felt foolish.

This mission wasn't just some young girl's dream of saving the world and having a happy ending. It was complex. And dark. And disappointing. "Our world is laced with brokenness," she says now, reflecting on that period, "and that is the greatest challenge."

And the greatest awakening.

In the beginning, Nardella remembered, Blood:Water celebrated every dollar raised and every life affected. That is no less valuable today.

And the hardships she has faced have helped better position the organization for the future. The financial deceit built the muscle for Blood:Water to develop the right kinds of accountability. The drought wasn't about the rain, but the fact that the community had come together even without promise of success.

And the death — from it, Nardella examined whether she would give her life for the people she worked so hard to help.

The Africans for whom so many give aid aren't victims. They are the heroes of their own story, with a humbling amount of resilience. And when they are afforded what so many of us take for granted a burden is lifted.

Jena Lee Nardella, co-founder of Blood:Water, shares a moment with a community member in Rwanda.(Photo: Submitted)

They have a gratitude, Nardella says, “that we don't even know how to hold.”

And for that understanding, Nardella is grateful. A decade since she started, she understands herself and her mission so much better. She finds satisfaction in it.

"We've actually never been called to save the world," she says. "We can't. We won't. But we can love the world — and we can love the world one person at a time."

Jena Lee Nardella, co-founder of Blood:Water, has written a memoir called "One Thousand Wells."(Photo: John Partipilo / The Tennessean)

'One Thousand Wells'

Nashville's Jena Lee Nardella is the co-founder and chief strategy officer for Blood:Water, an HIV and clean water-focused nonprofit that she started 10 years ago at the age of 22 alongside the band Jars of Clay.